Trusteer Sold to IBM

IBM on Thursday announced it was buying Trusteer, an Internet security specialist with offices in Boston and Israel and well known in the credit union space.

The computer services giant said it would be creating a new cyber security software lab in Israel with more than 200 researchers and developers from Trusteer and IBM. Their focus, IBM said, would be on mobile security, cyber threats, malware, fraud and other financial crimes.

Along with seven of the top 10 U.S. banks and nine of the top 10 U.K. banks, the company said, Trusteer software is used to secure accounts by credit unions individually and through online banking vendors.

IBM said it has now acquired a dozen security companies in recent years. Its security services monitor 15 billion security events a day for nearly 4,000 clients globally, the company said.

“Trusteer’s expertise and superior technology in enterprise endpoint defense and advanced malware prevention will help our clients across all industries address the constantly evolving threats they are facing,” said Brendan Hannigan, general manager, Security Systems Division, IBM.

“Together with IBM’s capabilities in advanced threat detection, analysis and remediation, we will now be able to offer our clients several additional layers of defense against sophisticated attackers,” Hannigan said in the announcement from IBM in Armonk, N.Y.

Trusteer was founded in 2006. Terms for its sale to IBM were not announced.

This is at least the second major sale of an Internet security firm for some of the Trusteer executives, including Amit Klein, the Trusteer CTO who had been chief scientist at New York-based Cyota Inc. when it was acquired by RSA Security in 2005, which was sold not long after, in 2006, to storage giant EMC Corp. The company also traces its roots to PassMark, another Internet security pioneer.

Another major player in the online security business for credit unions, SecureWorks in Atlanta, was sold to computer giant Dell in 2011.